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Escape Sequences

 

Certain special characters are represented as escape sequences. An escape sequence begins with a \ (backslash) followed by an alphanumeric character. For example, the \n escape sequence represents the newline character. Note that the two characters of an escape sequence are construed as a single character. 

 

Escape Sequence

Description

\n

Newline.

Position the screen cursor to the beginning of the next line.

\t

Horizontal tab.

Move the screen cursor to the next tab stop

\r

Carriage return.

Position the screen cursor to the beginning of the current line.

Do not advance to the next line.

\a

Alert.

Sound the alarm bell.

\\

Backslash.

Used to print a backslash character.

\'

Single quote.

Used to print a single quote character.

\"

Double quote.

Used to print a double quote character.

Complete List

\a /*alert (bell)*/ \b /*backspace*/ \f /*formfeed*/ \n /*newline*/ \r /*carriage return*/ \t /*horizontal tab*/ \v /*vertical tab*/ \\ /*backslash*/ \? /*question mark*/ \' /*single quote*/ \" /*double quote*/ \000 /*octal number*/ \xhh /*hexadecimal number*/

Some Examples

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()

{

    cout <<"A line of text using endl"<<endl;

    cout <<"A line of text using \n"<<"\n";

    cout <<"fragment 1"<<"\t"<<"fragment 2"<<" using tab escape sequence"<<endl;

    return 0;

}